Posts from — September 2008

“All users have to do is click their location on the website map and choose their veggies. Once a person has started a garden, he or she can add a small carrot representing that garden to the World Map of Small Food Gardens. This map is configured to let browsers find ideas or connections with other gardeners for sharing tips, seeds, recipes, and whatever else they need to know or swap in quest of the perfect small vegetable garden.”

Maria pulled up a horseradish root today, cleaned and grated it, added a touch of white vinegar and let me taste it just minutes from the ground. Wow! If you like the flavour of horseradish on oysters, prime rib, or steaks, why wouldn’t you have a patch growing in your garden.

Onni opened its second garden in late September under sunny skies. Earlier this year, Mike Clark talked to us as the developer was about to open its first community garden. Once again he provides us with details about the second site, which is located adjacent to the first one.

Just 3 weeks ago, the downtown Vancouver city block was covered in buildings. They were removed and new garden beds, paths and an irrigation system were installed. This has to be a ‘Guinness Book of Records’ record for the development of a new community garden.

Edible City is a documentary film that explores the issues of food justice, security, and sovereignty through a comprehensive view of urban farming in the Bay Area – a grassroots effort that sees people responding to climate change, rising food costs and gas prices, and increasing health concerns by strengthening connections to the food they eat and reaching out to their local communities.

In this December 1914 photograph, a British soldier of the London Rifle Brigade poses proudly behind his garden, festooned with stoneware rum jugs (on the extreme right). In the months to come, this location at Ploegsteert Wood in the Ypres Salient in Belgium would become the scene of horrific fighting. From the NPR website – from Imperial War Museum.

Kenneth Helphand published Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime in 2006.

“Kenneth Helphand, writes about war gardens — not just victory gardens, grown in time of scarcity, but those planted on hostile fronts, including Eastern Europe’s ghettos and the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II. Helphand calls the gardens an act of defiance.”

SBS Morning Wide is a variety, morning news show in Korea, which covers local, nationwide, and global issues. The show is very much like ABC’s Good Morning America or CBS Early Show in the U.S. This segment’s subtitle is ‘City Design Projects and World Famous Sustainable Cities in the Pacific Northwest’.

We all like to snack on salted edamame with our sushi when we dine out at a Japanese restaurant. But you can see in this video that they grow well in a home garden. Sharon chose our variety from the Salt Spring Seeds catalogue but there are also varieties in the West Coast Seeds lineup.

Wikipedia says: “The Japanese name edamame is commonly used in some English-speaking countries to refer to the dish. The Japanese name literally means “twig bean”, and is a reference to the short stem attached to the pod. This term originally referred to young soybeans in general. Over time, however, the prevalence of the salt-boiled preparation meant that the term edamame now often refers specifically to this dish.”

from Makerere University Press, 250 pages
Editors: Donald Cole, Diana Lee-Smith and George Nasinyama (Will be going to press in the next few weeks.)

“In an era of global urban food crises and rapid, unplanned
city growth, how can urban agriculture be transformed from a
potential source of health risks into a vehicle for healthier
urban households and local environments?”

• A novel guide to integrating agriculture and public health into urban policy
• “Policy dialogue” to engage researchers and policy makers in support of agriculture-based livelihoods of low income urban families
• A science-based approach to dealing with public health and food safety concerns
• Essential reading for professionals and academics involved in agriculture and the environment, public health, and urban planning and management

Since 2002, members of the Musqueam First Nation have grown vegetables on the farm site for their community kitchen project. With an interest in expanding the potential benefits of this community nutrition project, the farm initiated a new pilot program in 2005. In collaboration with 17 different agencies working on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), a plot of land on the farm is dedicated towards the DTES Aboriginal Community Kitchen Garden Project.

The use of the land for urban agriculture was dismissed out of hand (“not commercial agriculture”).

What nonsense. Enlightened communities around the world are racing to develop strong urban agriculture within their cities. Terms that five years ago were unheard of are today in common use: Food security, food democracy, food sovereignty, food miles, slow food. The community interest is clear.

Urban agriculture is the new darling of cities around the globe for good reason. Vancouver, blessed with good climate and good planning, has the land base, human capital and infrastructure capacity to quickly catch up — offering new models for Lower Mainland communities, the rest of Canada and the world.

Heidi Sinclair has spent the last few years developing this roof garden at the Collingwood Neighbourhood House in Vancouver BC. She gives Mike of City Farmer a brief tour of the newly opened community resource.

“This past winter, the rooftop garden of Collingwood Neighbourhood House (CNH) went under some serious construction; the old wooden plant boxes were removed from the upstairs deck and permanent flower beds made of cement were installed. The construction, finished in time for spring planting, has meant that the Renfrew Collingwood Food Security Institute (RCFSI) has been able to grow and harvest large amounts of fresh, locally-grown fruits and vegetables on the CNH rooftop.

Maria videos a hawk dining on a chickadee in our cherry tree at City Farmer’s garden. We can’t tell if this is a Coopers Hawk or a Sharp-shinned Hawk. For 30 minutes the hawk concentrated on his meal, while some crows looked on with interest and a black squirrel travelled its highway of branches nearby.